The votes are in, and members of the International Standards Organization have officially endorsed Sun Microsystems as the keeper of the Java realm.
"The industry trusts Sun to do the right thing, and that's exactly what we're doing," said Alan Baratz, president of Sun's JavaSoft division. "Locking people into proprietary technologies doesn't work any more.... The Web demands open standards. The Web demands choice."
The ebullience of Baratz's comments was prompted, perhaps, by the overwhelming support Sun received in winning approval as the official publicly available specification submitter for Java. As reported last week, the ISO's member countries gave Sun 20 "yes" votes of a possible 24, with only China and the United States casting "no" votes (Italy and Switzerland abstained).
But tougher hurdles are ahead.
Sun's next task is to develop a complex formal submission on what precisely constitutes Java: the technical specifications for the language, the attributes of the Java Virtual Machine, and the core application programming interfaces. That submission will represent the Java standard that Sun will be responsible for maintaining. For adoption, the standard will require two-thirds of the voting members' approval, with no more than a one-quarter "no" votes.
The ISO's joint technical committee would make the final decision on changes to a Java standard. But with its new status, Sun will have an ISO-blessed upper hand in deciding which changes are submitted to the committee.
"The real work on our part is to take the platform specifications and transpose them to what the ISO wants. We don't have a timetable for that right now," said Jim Mitchell, vice president of JavaSoft.
Baratz said Sun would not change the process that has been in place for developing the Java language. Along with the Java developer community, a number of licensee companies, including IBM, Netscape, Oracle - and even antagonist Microsoft - have participated in that process.
"Our overriding concern is that we have to preserve 'write once, run everywhere.' It's very important for the world that we'll be able to work together," said Mitchell.
The standards vote is a lobbying triumph for Sun, which is on the threshold of gaining control over how its prized language will evolve. Acceptance of Sun's Java standard will allow the many other companies with a vested interest in the language to move forward with the development of products that have ISO blessing, and all the marketing advantages that designation carries.
Sun's control of Java would also forestall what the company views as renegade development of the language by Microsoft. The software superpower is the target of an October breach-of-contract lawsuit for allegedly embarking on development of a noncompliant version of Java for its Internet Explorer 4.0 browser.
"The rules have changed," said Baratz. "Companies who understand open standards will succeed. Companies who don't will fail."
